What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Directed by Kirk Jones

(PG-13)

**

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This ensemble romantic comedy “isn’t as charmless as you might have feared,” said Farran Smith Nehme in the New York Post. “Dully shot,” “predictably plotted,” and loaded with jokes that seem older than the 28-year-old pregnancy guide it’s named after, it’s nevertheless partially redeemed by “a cast working furiously to sell every scene.” With five different couples enduring the trials of gestation, the “cobbled-together” screenplay has too many story lines to track, said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. But Elizabeth Banks is very funny as a baby expert suffering through a complicated pregnancy, and Jennifer Lopez “has some well-acted moments” as a woman seeking to adopt. Plus, there’s Chris Rock, “who gets to liven things up as the ringleader of a beleaguered fathers’ group.” Still, the performances aren’t “nearly enough” to offset the “hackneyed” script, said Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic. What to Expect is “a mishmash of mediocrity”—a grab bag of cartoonish situations that feel so foreign to the events of an actual pregnancy that they might as well have been “set on Mars.”